


sub-zero, can't stand still

by kimaracretak



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 22:11:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4322679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>things you said with no space between us</em>: On apologies, forgiveness, and the lack thereof.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sub-zero, can't stand still

It would be nice, Lyta thinks, to not be running for once. She's been fighting since she can remember, running scared from herself and non-telepaths and the Corps and the Shadows and and _and_. Somewhere along the way she turned angry instead of scared, but she never quite managed to stop, never quite managed to get the right amount of distance between herself and anything else.

Even on Babylon 5, even when she (technically, physically) stops running, it doesn't feel like she has. Doesn't feel like she _deserves_ this respite, as war rages around the station and the walls tighten around her. Funny, really, that for the first time in ages that she feels she could actually _do something good out there,_ run with a purpose and for the greater good and all that shit she never had time to care about, she absolutely cannot be _out there._

Lyta's not a prisoner, not really and certainly not like she was with the Corps – and certainly no one here would be tactless enough to actually use that word – but she's stuck here, until Sheridan or Ivanova or Delenn decides they need her on one of the ships. But she has a long list of things she _is_ : telepath, traitor, soldier, outcast, Vorlon, weapon; being able to leave “prisoner” off is hardly some sort of accomplishment.

“Lyta.”

She shuts her eyes and tries to come up with something to say that's rude enough to get Delenn to go away but not rude enough to come back and bite her in the ass when she was in a better mood or this war was over, whichever came first. Wishes she didn't _care_ , that she could just stick Delenn in her “nice, but over it” box and move the fuck on.

“ _Lyta_.” Delenn says again before she's had a chance to come up with anything, and Lyta sighs. Delenn doesn't sound like she's going to leave no matter what Lyta says, like maybe she thinks sitting alone at a one-person table with a nearly-empty bottle of wine in the middle of the Zocalo staring into space means _come talk to me about my shitty life with these shitty aliens_ instead of _go the fuck away_.

She opens her eyes, then, and tries to fix a polite, distant smile on her face. “Delenn. I would ask you to sit, but I wasn't expecting company.”

“I'm sorry,” Delenn says, and, oh, what Lyta would give to hear Delenn say that about something that mattered.

“Aren't we all, these days,” she says dryly instead. Delenn's eyelids flicker, and Lyta can feel some of her residual irritation even through her shields. Good. If she's going to ruin Lyta's night – not like her night was shaping up to be _good_ before, but it's the principle of the thing – the least Lyta can do is poke at her a bit in return.

“Lyta, please. I did not come here to be rude.”

Lyta snorts derisively. “Could've fooled me. Are still fooling me, actually.”

There's a quaver in Delenn's voice when she repeats, “ _please_ ,” and, okay, now Lyta's curious. “Please, Lyta, I just wanted to talk to you. To...” she hesitates, long enough for Lyta to take another sip of her drink.

 _To go away,_ she thinks, experimentally pushing the thought towards Delenn. Not the most ethical thing to do, but far from the most unethical thing she's done recently. Certainly less unethical than whatever the Vorlons did to her. Delenn bites her lip, shakes her head as if the thought were a physical thing she could brush off. Worth a try.

“I wanted to apologize to you,” Delenn finally says, all in a rush like she's afraid Lyta's going to try to push her away again.

 _Too late_ is on the tip of her tongue, but fuck, she's curious now. Delenn, of all people, deigning to apologize to her? “Let's take a walk,” she says instead, and leaves without checking to see if Delenn is following her.

 

*

 

Lyta still doesn't know the station as well as she should, or maybe the bulkheads are moving around instead of just inward. Delenn doesn't speak, and for the first few minutes Lyta takes it as a kindness. By the time she realizes they're lost, she wonders if she had kept silent on purpose.

“Fine,” she finally says, spinning on her heel so suddenly that Delenn nearly walks smack into her. “What is this all about?”

“As I said – ” Delenn starts, once she's recovered her balance, but Lyta cuts her off.

“No. No more bullshit, Delenn, I know you and I know you don't apologize, you, you just – you come up with battle plans and tactics and ways to save the entire _fucking_ galaxy and forget about saving people while you're at it, forget especially about the people you can't decide are people or tools and I'm, I'm tired of it, okay?” She feels split in two, one Lyta with a steadily rising voice who can feel tears pricking at the corner of her eyes and one who watches the other take two steps forward with an odd, detached mixture of horror and pride. Delenn watches too, face unreadable. “I'm sick of not being able to fight this war for myself,” she adds, more quietly now. “Can you apologize for any of that?”

They both know the answer to that. Lyta wonders if Delenn regrets it as much as she does. When Delenn reaches out a trembling hand to cup her cheek, she thinks the answer to _that_ at least might be _yes_.

Lyta doesn't remember deciding to take another step forward, but somehow she has and suddenly she's wrapped in Delenn's arms. Delenn holds her close, so close like maybe she thinks she could slip into Lyta's body as easily as Lyta could slip into her mind. Maybe Lyta would even let her. Be nice to let someone else take over for a while.

“You're going to save all of us,” Delenn murmurs into her skin, and Lyta feels rather than hears the other woman's breath hitch. “Why will you not let any of us save you?”

There's no space between them; there's a galaxy between them. Lyta could kiss her without hardly moving her head. Delenn would probably let her, probably wouldn't even care that however they spent the night would be about physicality and forgetting and nothing else. She recognizes Delenn's elliptical attempt at something approaching apology, and _fuck_ if it isn't going to be even harder now to unambiguously dislike her.

The corridor is deserted, and likely to stay that way all night. She's half-wondered what it would be like to kiss Delenn. “Saving me. That's a nice thought.”

Her voice is flat and cold, and Delenn pulls back a little, meeting Lyta's empty eyes with her own concerned ones. Lyta's lips twist in a mockery of a smile. “You couldn't save me if you tried.”

And then she does give in to the impulse to kiss Delenn, and it's quick and sharp with too many teeth but Delenn shudders underneath her, and Lyta has time to think _I could get used to this_ before she wrenches herself away.

She steps back before she can do something else stupid, like kissing Delenn again. It's cold, outside the circle of Delenn's arms, and she resists the urge to shiver. _No._ This _is what you have to get used to._

“Oh, Lyta,” Delenn says softly, and she looks . . . not quite heartbroken. Mournful. If Lyta hadn't already known with more certainty than she'd had about anything else that she was too raw and exhausted to forgive her, this look would be the thing to make her think about changing her mind.

She tries to come up a graceful way to extricate herself from the conversation, fails, resigns herself to being rude. Again. Lyta turns around, takes a step, then another. Forward, keep moving forward. Delenn doesn't try to stop her. Except . . . she pauses. “But it does – it does mean something. That you tried.”

She doesn't have to turn around to know that the smile Delenn gives in response is the closest one to genuine either of them have given all night.

  


 


End file.
